Characterizing the Self-System over Time in Adolescence: Internal Structure and Associations with Internalizing Symptoms

The longitudinal effects among self and identity processes, and between these processes and internalizing symptoms, are not well understood. As a result, the present study was designed to ascertain the over-time effects among identity commitment, reconsideration of commitments, and self-concept clarity, as well as to map the interplay of these self and identity processes with anxiety and depressive symptoms in early adolescence. A sample of 923 Dutch adolescents (mean age 12.4 years at Time 1; 49.3% female) participated at each of five annual assessments. Multivariate growth curve and cross-lagged panel models indicated that the association between self-concept clarity and commitment was bidirectional, that reconsideration occurs based on problems or dissatisfaction with self-concept clarity and with identity commitments, and that self-concept clarity (but not commitment or reconsideration) temporally precedes depressive and anxiety symptoms. Results are discussed in terms of the structure of the self-system and its associations with internalizing symptoms.     

Linking Parent–Child and Peer Relationship Quality to Empathy in Adolescence: A Multilevel Meta-Analysis

Empathy, which is the ability to feel concern for and to understand others’ feelings, is thought to develop in high quality relationships with parent and peers, but also to facilitate the quality of these relationships. While a wide literature has addressed this aspect, the heterogeneity of primary studies, in which different indicators of relationship quality (e.g., support, conflict) and empathy (i.e., affective and cognitive) have been examined, makes it difficult to draw conclusive answers. Therefore, it remained ambiguous how parent–child and peer relationship quality are associated with adolescents’ empathy. In order to increase the understanding of these associations, a multilevel meta-analysis was performed, which allowed for including multiple effect sizes from each study. By a systematic literate search, 70 eligible studies were found that provided 390 effect sizes from 75 independent samples. The results showed a small positive correlation between parent–child relationship quality and empathy, and a small-to-moderate positive correlation between peer relationship quality and empathy, which was significantly stronger than the correlation with parent–child relationship quality. Hence, the meta-analytic results indicate that adolescents with higher quality relationships, especially with peers, indeed tend to show more concern for and understanding of others’ emotions than adolescents with lower quality relationships. Moreover, the moderation analyses showed stronger correlations for the positive dimension of relationship quality than for the negative dimension, and stronger correlations for composite scores of affective and cognitive empathy than for separate scores of the empathy dimensions. However, no differences in correlations were found between the affective and cognitive empathy dimension, and no moderation effects were found for gender and age. Thus, this meta-analysis demonstrates robust positive associations between parent–child and peer relationship quality and empathy in adolescence, implying that good empathic abilities may be a protective factor for experiencing poor relationships.

     

The Longitudinal Role of Self-Concept Clarity and Best Friend Delinquency in Adolescent Delinquent Behavior

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Adolescence tends to be characterized by a temporary peak in delinquent behavior, and friends in particular play a key role in the initiation and the development...     

Living in the Past or Living in the Future? Analyzing Parties’ Platform Change In Between Elections,The Netherlands 1997–2014

Do parties change their platform in anticipation of electoral losses? Or do parties respond to experienced losses at the previous election? These questions relate to two mechanisms to align public opinion with party platforms: (1) rational anticipation, and (2) electoral performance. While extant work empirically tested, and found support for, the latter mechanism, the effect of rational anticipation has not been put to an empirical test yet. We contribute to the literature on party platform change by theorizing and assessing how party performance motivates parties to change their platform in-between elections. We built a new and unique dataset of >20,000 press releases issued by 15 Dutch national political parties that were in parliament between 1997 and 2014. Utilizing automated text analysis (topic modeling) to measure parties’ platform change, we show that electoral defeat motivates party platform change in-between elections. In line with existing findings, we demonstrate that parties are backward-looking.     

Credibility Enacted: Understanding the Meaning of Credible Political Leadership in the Dutch Parliamentary Election Campaign of 2010

In times of perception politics, the credibility of electoral candidates is a crucial asset in political marketing. This raises the question to which political leaders citizens attribute credibility and how political credibility is gained and lost through media performance. We analyze and compare two contrasting cases during the Dutch parliamentary election campaign of 2010. Whereas in this campaign Mark Rutte—leader of the liberal party VVD—gained credibility, the credibility of Job Cohen—at the time, leader of the social-democratic PvdA—waned substantially. To understand this we extend the source credibility approach with a dramaturgical approach, and as such we shed light on what happens in the dynamic, interactive process between leaders and audiences in which credibility is constructed.     

Complex Contracting: Management Challenges and Solutions

Governments at all levels buy mission‐critical goods and services whose attributes and performance requirements are hard to define and produce. Many governments—and the public managers who lead them—lack experience and knowledge about how to contract for complex products. The contract management counsel provided to public managers is thin. Missing is a conceptual managerial framework to guide purchasing the complex products that are often so critical to public organizations' core missions. Drawing on perspectives from across the social sciences, the framework presented in this article provides guidance on how managers can harness the upsides of complex contracting while avoiding its pitfalls. The framework helps identify conditions that increase the likelihood of positive outcomes for the purchasing government and the vendor—the win‐win. To illustrate the framework, the article provides examples of successful and failed acquisitions for complex products such as transportation projects, social service systems, and information technology systems.     

What Draws Politicians’ Attention? An Experimental Study of Issue Framing and its Effect on Individual Political Elites

What politicians devote attention to, is an important question as political attention is a precondition of policy change. We use an experimental design to study politicians’ attention to incoming information and deploy it among large samples of elected politicians in three countries: Belgium, Canada, and Israel. Our sample includes party leaders, ministers and regular members of parliament. These elites were confronted with short bits of summary information framed in various ways and were then asked how likely it was that they would read the full information. We test for three frames: conflict, political conflict, and responsibility. We find that framing moderates the effect of messages on politicians’ attention to information. Politicians react more strongly (i.e., they devote more attention) to political conflict frames than to non-political conflict frames and they react stronger to political responsibility attributions than to non-political responsibility attributions. Conflict frames attract more attention than consensus frames only from members of opposition parties. Political conflict frames attract more attention from government party politicians. These effects occur largely across issues and across the three countries.     

EU Simulations and Engagement: Motivating Greater Interest in European Union Politics

While the effects of simulation-based courses on the knowledge of participating students may be marginal in relation to standard lecture and discussion-based courses, this article argues that the greatest leverage is gained by increasing participating students’ level of interest in the subject of study and in politics more broadly. Participants tend to become increasingly absorbed in their roles and in the politics of the institutions at the center of the simulation. To better consider this possibility, we conducted a survey of students participating in the 2015 Mid-Atlantic European Union Simulation and of appropriate control populations. The survey results indeed suggest that, much more than simply acquiring knowledge about the EU, the simulation experience serves to generate more robust interest in the subject of study.     

Small Countries,Big Performers: In Search of Shared Strategic Public Sector HRM Practices in Successful Small Countries

This article compares strategic public sector HRM practices between 10 small countries that have consistently shown extraordinary economic, social, and governance performance. The fact that these small countries, which are traditionally considered to be disadvantaged, have become benchmarks of good government suggests they have uniquely maximized and leveraged their key resource: people. In search of novel lessons, we assess through secondary data how their public sectors have organized and institutionalized four key HRM activities: 1) selection, 2) appraisal, 3) training, and 4) compensation, and whether they engage in strategic, centralized efforts to architect and “bundle” these activities. Our exploratory case study findings show that these high performing countries employ various integrated efforts to attract the best and brightest into their public sectors, and train and reward them well, although they differ in terms of their centralization dynamics. We conclude our article with seven propositions for future research and implications for emerging small countries.